At the Mile End Gate by Sally Worboyes

Author:Sally Worboyes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

As Jessie had predicted, Max had no qualms about driving to Suffolk, especially since Dolly and Stanley were joining them. He felt that this was the beginning of him being accepted as one of the family.

Leaving Billy and Emma with their grandparents, the family group left very early on a sunny September morning and headed North. Stanley insisted on being the map reader which Max agreed to even though he knew the route, having been to Bury St Edmunds twice before. Once as a boy on a days outing with his family, and again, just before the war, when he bought his second-hand motor car and became a lone day-tripper.

‘It should take about two and a half hours,’ said Max, beginning to chart the day, ‘by then well be ready for lunch. I telephoned the hotel yesterday and booked us a table for one o’clock.’

‘Hotel?’ said Dolly. ‘We ain’t stopping overnight Max, are we?’

‘No, of course were not, I couldn’t afford their prices. But we will be eating in their restaurant, my treat, you’ll love it. I remember when my parents took us to the Cherub Hotel for afternoon tea.’

‘Sounds all right to me,’ said Dolly. ‘What d’yer reckon Stanley, good enough for the likes of us is it?’

‘Yeah, I’m not fussed,’ he said, preoccupied with his map. ‘Do you know your way to Epping, Max?’

‘I do.’

‘Good, ’cos that’s where we’re ’eading. From there you wanna pick up the…’ he peered more closely at the map. ‘’Ow you supposed to read these things? Look at the print – if you can see it! Anyway there’ll be road signs,’ he said, pushing the map into the side pocket of the car door.

‘Epping, Newmarket, then Bury St Edmunds – piece of cake. That’s what I mean, Doll. See… them Romans… they knew what they was doing. Wish I knew where they buried their dead, treasure must be down there somewhere, eh, Max? ’Cos you know, a lot of Romans settled there in Suffolk and Norfolk, and the Celts before ’em, ain’t that right, Doll?’

‘More or less.’ Dolly wanted to drop the subject, her subject. She loved Stanley to bits but he did have a tendency to overdo the little he’d picked up from reading her library books and sometimes got his times and places wrong. ‘Is it posh then, Max? This hotel?’

‘Well, no posher than some of ours.’

‘What, in the East End Max?’ said Stanley, grinning. ‘Gotta be joking, ain’t yer?’

‘Not in it,’ said Max, slowing down for the traffic lights. ‘But the West End’s not that many miles away and given time, certain parts of the East End will be back on the map.’

‘Yeah,’ grinned Stanley, ‘I can just see ’em queuing up to live in Aldgate, Whitechapel and Brick Lane. Slumming it with the rest of us.’

‘Some parts of the East End like Beaumont Square in Stepney are in prime positions – close to the heart of London. And once the new central line underground is up and

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